“I can keep myself safe.”
“Is that what you were doing in that tomb? I saw you on your knees, eyes rolled back, screaming into the darkness. Was that your idea ofsafe?” He needn’t be so sharp, so cruel, but she could tell thesight of her in that moment had rattled him too. “When I touched you…when I kissed you…I saw it too.” His eyes found hers. “I saw how this ends for you, Ree.”
With her on a burning pyre. Just like the first Quarter Queen. History repeating itself in a vicious wheel of time.
“Demons lie.” Ree got to her feet and strode over to the shelf where her mother kept the poisons and hexing powders. She leaned against it, resisted the urge to shatter everything. She hated feeling trapped, cornered. So many truths. And so many lies. Spoken in the short span of a few days after not seeing each other for years. It was maddening. How shefeltfor him was maddening.
“Are you willing to take that chance? If you open the Veil, you would be opening the door to death, and you wouldn’t just be bringing back Marie Laveau. You would be bringing back Jon, and all of the dead too. That is what the Harbinger meant. Do you understand that now?” Henryk was on his feet now too. “And if you do that, I can guarantee that the Inquisition would make it their mission to have you tortured and executed.”
Outside, the music had stopped briefly. The silence that stretched between them was somehow louder, more urgent than the note of any trumpet.
“And what would you have me do?” she asked finally.
She could see in his eyes the same impossible bargain he’d tried to make during their interrogation. “Let her go, Ree. Let Marie go this time. And live your life, not your mother’s.Yours.Choose your own freedom.”
Ree turned away from him and gripped the shelf with both hands.
This time.She knew his eyes had turned to the past, to the moment she’d left him on that bridge alone. She’d thought of what might have come from that day a thousand times but could never quite see the future. Now she could, with bittersweet clarity. She could see them sailing off across the blue expanse of the Mississippi, to somewhere, anywhere else. And they would have found it, whatever it was, because they would have had each other. They would have been happy. And they would have been, most important, free from the golden cage of New Orleans at last.
But that day had not come. Ree was certain of her decision, andHenryk would not sway her from it. But she would have this night, if she would have nothing else. Ree peeled the gown from her body, let it slide uselessly to the floor in a glittering puddle. She remained in the silken slip that she’d worn beneath.
Henryk had taken a step toward her, then froze. It looked as if she’d caught him deliberating on his next words but then—by the startled look in his eyes—she’d snatched the words clean from his mouth. Ree watched his eyes slowly lower over the contours of her body, the roundness of her hips in the candlelight.
“Are you going to stand there and be a statue, Inquisitor?” Her mouth quirked into a smile. “Or are you going to spend the night with me?”
That was all it took. He crossed the room, taking Ree into his arms. His lips found hers, then trailed greedily along her shoulders, her neck, the tender space beneath her ears. There was that overpowering scent of myrrh again, that smell of anointing that had no place between them. It was an oil for holy rituals. Surely, they would join together in a ritual tonight. But it would not be holy.No saints and no sinners.
“It is not morning yet,” she whispered against his lips. Was that a reminder to herself? A warning to him? In the morning, things would be different.Theywould be different. But for now? Her eyes snatched hungrily at the shape of him in the candlelight. For now, she would indulge herself this one pleasure.
“No,” he agreed softly. “It is not.”
“Fornication would be…forbidden in the Vatican, yes?”
“Yes.” He cast a toying glance about the chamber draped in red silks and incense, then lifted her by the waist as if she weighed nothing. “But we are not in the Vatican.”
He carried her over to the soft rug near the fireplace, their intertwined reflections caught in a long mirror edged in golden scrollwork and vines that was hung beside the mantel.
He tore the slip from her shoulders, leaving her in only her thin stripping of undergarments. She ripped off his own clothes, buttons popping. She greedily drank in every inch of his bare skin. He was hardened with muscle, the firelight dancing on the sculpted lines of his chest, the soft sprinkle of auburn hair trailing down to the thickevidence of his desire for her. Her heart hammered in her ribs, and she licked her lips. His eyes followed the movement, dark. Hungry.
She pulled the veil and Marie’s golden cloth from her hair, and they slipped from her bare shoulders like dark water as she shook out her unruly curls. Claudette had softened her coils into looser waves for the night—it could never be truly straightened, least of all in the frustrating perpetual Louisiana damp—and her hair fell over her breasts and down to her belly in wild ringlets.
Her fingers slid into his hair; it was normally the most beautiful shade of russet brown, a deep chestnut with a hint of red wine. But now it shone black in the mix of shadow and candlelight that bathed the room, almost as dark as hers.
Softly, he kissed her neck, suckling until she felt a shiver trail up her spine.
“Show me,” he murmured, teeth against her throat. “Show me where I hurt you, princess.”
Henryk pulled back, staring at her with a look that was as amorous as it was repentant.Go on. Showme.
She could start with her wrists, which that horrifying chair had squeezed and squeezed until she felt less than human. The same hand he had cruelly twisted in that cell when he’d left that coin for her. He’d been wearing a disguise then, she understood now. But that hadn’t made her pain, her sadness any less real. Fine. She would show him. Ree took his hand and slowly dragged it down from her neck to her chest, right over her beating heart. He had hurt her plenty. But he had hurt her there most of all.
“Ree,I—”
Ree pressed a finger to his lips and moved his hand lower, to cup one of her breasts, so full in his hand. Her nipple peaked under his worshipful caress, her blood roaring in her veins. She reached again for his hair, fingers slowly feeling into its thick dampness, then pulled his Inquisitor mask back down. She reached into her hair, pulling the thin scrap of fabric back over her eyes. They could hide behind the faceless disguises, pretend that this was another part of the long, uneasy game they’d been playing since his return.
It was better this way. She would not have to see his face, and she would not be forced to remember the look of pleasure and rapture,the look that might break her heart in the end. Theirs would be a truce of the body, a temporary pact that would break like a spell at morning’s first light. She wanted to hold on to that spell as long as fate allowed.
They twisted and turned until she was astride him. The music from the streets flared, smothering the hiss she released as she lowered herself over the hard length of him and started into a slow, steady rhythm. Ree’s eyes turned up to the mirror, where she could see her reflection: her body rising glistening and damp, her hair wild and undone, through the twin holes in the mask her eyes completely white, flooded with the force of her magic. She turned her face back to his, allowed him to see her as the witch that she was. Ran her hands up his muscled arms and around the Inquisitor’s throat. She squeezed softly, then harder, eliciting a moan from Henryk, a feral sound trapped in the back of his throat. So tortured he was, gazing up at her through his lashes, his eyes half lidded with desire. No more lies between them. No more games.
